I think I may now understand what is going on.BTW I have not yet received any emails back from the support desk.

The most likely reason for removing my dolls can only be this FAQ #502 : help.deviantart.com/502/Can I submit 'Dolls' or 'Characters' which I made on certain websites?

Here is the section that I think they would have used."As many of the original owners of these websites prohibit this activity, and since the resulting 'dolls' are not original works and require no effort at all to assemble, we do not allow these pre-fabricated pieces of pixelart to be submitted to deviantART, nor may you use isolated pieces from them to assemble your own customized or 'edited' creations for submission."

1 - They are my artwork, not a third party (very obvious if they just look at a few pages)2 - They are ORIGINAL creations. They capture the Harry Potter characters in way no other artwork out there.3 - Because I choose to make my artwork available to people in a creative and engaging manner I will be penalized for this?

If I assume they did their due diligence then number 3 is the only explanation as why they removed my dolls.

If the argument is made that this is not the reason why the dolls were deleted then Incompetence would be the kindest tag I could apply to the devart's activity.

Points to consider when judging how incompetent this particular sysadmin was.

1) He must have covered up his eyes so as not to see the turtwig image as he deleted it. This was a collab piece I did for Momogirl (turtwig) www.deviantart.com/deviation/5…. Not a doll at all. An original sprite that she drew that I then went ahead and animated it into a deviantart icon. For them to miss it they would have had to be blind. Try as I might, squinting and glancing, a doll I did not see. So blind they must have been. If they are blind then what the hell are they doing deleting artwork for copyright infringement.

2) If he was following the rule that all elements of the dollmaker should not be posted, then the owls must also be deleted. I think nothing more than a cursory glance at the dollmaker was made. The two owls were skipped over. Maybe they are keeping me on edge and in a couple of days will be back to delete the owls

3) If they actually looked at each character/doll that I had they would have found that quite a few characters are impossible to make using that doll maker since those characters were not exported to the doll maker yet.

4) If they had doubts about who the original artist was, check my site (elouai.com) I link back to my gallery and journal. Or just check my journal. A few clicks at most should have made it abundantly clear that the artwork was mine. You really have to be covering your eyes while deleting the artwork not to notice who the artwork belongs to.

It seems that the deviantart rule regarding doll makers is such that if you see a doll maker generator than any artwork resembling that doll maker generator should now be deleted. *shakes head

However the FAQ does not say that. But people seem to think it implies that.

Another argument that was made that on hindsight that I really disliked. That each character is not unique and the variations are easily created. That just the dollmaker itself should be submitted and not each character that I create individually.

A false statement.

The artwork is created BEFORE I placed them in the dollmaker.This comment actually degrades the artists efforts and his artwork. I don't think it was implied as such, but that is essentially what it implies. It comes across as saying this particular style is not worthy to be called artwork. I am sure that is not what is meant, but it is a subtle snub that should not be ignored. Creating a caricature is one of the trickiest thing that you can do as an artist. And given that I restricted myself to a fixed base made it doubly difficult on myself. The effort needed to create these pieces is high indeed, these aren't POOR imitations, they are high quality caricatures that at a glance is immediately recognizable for who they represent. This is no small feat and not by chance did this happen.

Maybe I should email help desk with these points. But I have not received any acknowledgment from them, so trying to guess and make arguments would be a futile operation. Communication is a 2-way street. Right now I am putting messages in a bottle and throwing them out to sea.

I cannot believe the incompetence (harsh as this word is, incompetence is still the only way I can describe it) of the devart administrator who removed my images as copyright violations.

Based on what, I can only surmise it was because of my signature that had the harry potter doll maker link.

I am still in disbelief about all of this. I feel so soiled and violated at the moment. It is so hurtful when you are wrongly accused in this manner and in a public forum that it is difficult to describe. I have described their process similar to the way Salem witch trails were held. Neighbors could safely accuse someone of being a witch while remaining anonymous in the process. The burden of proof then fell to the 'witches' to prove they werent witches. Damage is already done, they have publicly been called witches, and they are already termed guilty in the eyes of the community. This process MUST change. It is so wrong, I was about to upload an updated fleur delacour character but I don't want it to be deleted.

When the work is clearly mine and a paper trail so easy to see (see my journal for some of the work I did to prepare the images and create them, elouai.livejournal.com), indicates a level of laziness that really has very little regard to the artist and their works.

Okay, maybe they have some doubts, please ask me and I can easily show them the process.

Maybe the base was always the same, and they did not like that, but doing caricatures with those restrictions and getting them to look exactly like their real life counterpart takes a LOT of work. This is not a simple process by any means.

I was furious, now I am just depressed and upset. Violated best describes what I am feeling right now

They even removed animated turtwig O_O!!!I had received permission to animate the drawing by Momogirl? Why was that removed.

Amazed and shocked I am.

[edited my journal to remove 'insulting' elements in it and explain a few points more clearly]

Tell me which Harry Potter characters you would like to see next so I will get these done first.I already have a rough list, but I am willing to reorder this list based on what people would like to see next.